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Quick Hits – February 16, 2016

Sorry conservatives! It’s gonna be a liberal court!

I gotta tell you, that race-baiting, homophobic, obtuse, self-indulgent, and beyond egotistical Antonin Scalia, the man who made a mockery of being a Supreme Court Justice, is far more fun in death than he ever was in life.

To wit, sitting back and watching all my conservative friends go bonkers over Scalia’s possible replacement is even more entertaining than watching Eduardo Rafael Cruz take a polygraph test.

Once again, it appears to be up to me to set my sad, confused, and perpetually petrified rightwing brothers and sisters straight. Who said I didn’t have a heart?

Barack Obama will not be appointed to the Supreme Court! The only President who ever pulled that off, William Howard Taft, was appointed eight long years later after heavily lobbying for the position. Barack Obama didn’t destroy the country, he didn’t take your guns, he didn’t steal your girlfriend, and he has no interest in serving on the Supreme Court because which would be a huge salary cut for a retired President. Sheesh! You’d think after eight reasonable years, y’all wouldn’t be afraid of the black guy anymore.

It doesn’t matter if the GOP does what they do best – delay and obstruct – because there’s no way a Republican wins the White House in 2016. Women won’t vote for Donald Trump or Eduardo Cruz and those two circus clowns are doing a bang up job of destroying Marco Rubio, the only one who could actually win. If the President doesn’t get his appointee, then Hillary or Bernie will!

With the death of Scalia, the Supreme Court is officially liberal and business will go on as usual. If you really think there’s suddenly going to be a slew of 4 – 4 votes, you’re dreaming. Delaying this appointment won’t matter.

There is absolutely no precedent for a final year president not making a SCOTUS choice. If Ronald Reagan could do it, so can Barack Obama.

Oh! And the Clintons didn’t have Scalia killed either. If that were their modus operandi then Monica Lewinsky would’ve disappeared a long time ago.

So please get a grip. Despite Republicans’ best obstructive and whining efforts, we’re gonna have a liberal Supreme Court.

The other side of Frank Mautino

Shortly after running Friday’s Quick Hits, a good friend and great source took me to task for repeating the rumors regarding our besieged Illinois Auditor General. This gentleman, who’s known Mr. Mautino for years, hypothesized:

The size of his former State Rep district means his vehicular expenses were not out of line.

Mautino was the victim of an administrative assistant and/or campaign treasurer who was/were prone to some of the sloppiest record keeping I’ve ever seen.

The Auditor’s spokesperson is doing an absolutely abysmal job of getting out in front of this one.

The only folks reporting this story are the Edgar County Watchdogs or, as I like to call them, the Edgar County Loons, who have no clue when it comes to well…anything, especially good journalism.

If points one through three turn out to be true, then Mautino is prone to the kind of bad luck that’d make a Bernie Sanders Iowa Caucus coin flipping contest look a lot less fixed. So is that sad 1 through 3 scenario possible? Sure! But if it does turn out to be the case, I wouldn’t recommend standing within 20 yards of Frank on a cloudy day.

But there is something to number four. The Loons are about to be on the hook for $1,050,000 in damages for libeling a Kane County printer and, given their ongoing pronouncements, they still haven’t figured out that you can’t call people “criminals” without due cause.

Worse yet, their “investigative” reporting technique generally consists of looking for inane technicalities that almost always collapse under the slightest scrutiny. I hear some real reporters are looking into this one so let’s reserve judgment till then.

The Examiner behaves not unlike a Dyson vacuum cleaner

Though I certainly take issue with the “we don’t have to live up to our own standard” mentality that plagues the Daily Herald and Courier-News these days, at least they make an effort to appear equitable. Meanwhile, the Examiner has dispensed with all such pretense.

And the best evidence of their propaganda-ish proclivities are the subtle workings of “reporter” Seth Somebody who clearly graduated from Joe’s School of Motorcycle Repair and Weekend Journalism. I hear their main campus is somewhere in a garage behind Chicago Street.

So our enterprising Leni Reifenstahl (look it up) recently sent a series of questions to the non-loon U-46 School Board members and it was even more entertaining than listening to Donald Trump expound on the merit of Megyn Kelly.

Aint’ it funny how Board Member Jeanette Ward is always the victim. Poor Saint Jeanette! Just like Peter Parker, so misunderstood. Being a conservative certainly means everyone else having to say they’re sorry.

Ah well! What should anyone expect from a publication that printed U-46 passwords, wouldn’t know the truth if it bit ‘em in the butt, and, in the ‘90s, sent unaccompanied and unpaid 12 year-old delivery girls to collect money from random Streamwood residents for a paper they didn’t want.

Nothing could possibly go wrong with that now, could it?

As my mother used to say, if you’re unfortunate enough to read anything in the Examiner, consider the source.